Bruce

BruceHistoric railway town south of Quorn
Located 334 km north of Adelaide, 40 km from Port Augusta and 293
metres above sea level, Bruce is a tiny railway station at the
southern end of the main Flinders Ranges with a current population
of four and a range of animals.

Prior to European settlement it is thought the Nugunu Aborigines
lived in the area. The first European settlers arrived in the
1850s. The town of Bruce was officially laid out and declared a
town in 1876. The town was named after a well-known farmer in the
district although there is a view which says it was named after a
friend of Governor Jervois. The County of Frome in which Bruce is
situated is named after Captain E.C. Frome who succeeded Colonel
Light as South Australia's Surveyor General. The county of Frome
was proclaimed in 1851 and the Hundred of Willochra was proclaimed
in 1875.

This was the line from Peterborough, the headquarters of the
narrow gauge division of the South Australian Railways, to Quorn
which was the southernmost point of the original Ghan train which
slowly made its way towards Alice Springs. It finally reached Alice
Springs in 1927.

At the time it was also part of the railway line from Sydney to
Perth. A traveller would have gone from Sydney to Broken Hill then
on to Peterborough and Quorn, down the Pitchi Richi Pass then onto
Port Augusta and across the Nullarbor.

Bruce is the centre of the Willochra Plain. The plain was opened
up for closer settlement in the 1860s. The land was resumed from
the large sheep runs and each settler, in many cases from Britain
and from Germany, was allocated 640 acres (a square mile) of land.
They had to commit themselves to putting a dwelling on the land
within two years. At the time it was covered with acacia and the
first thing the farmers did was clear the land. This was based on
the optimistic and inaccurate belief that 'rain followed the
plough'. There was a tremendous drought from 1864-66 and there was
further droughts in the 1880s and 1890s. By the 1890s any hope of
making the Willochra Plain the granary of Australia was over. There
had been a time when Hawker had been the last grain loading
facility in the state.

The plan was that Bruce was going to be the largest town on the
plain. It was expected to be larger than Quorn. Quorn developed
more rapidly because by the 1860s-1870s there were 500-600 men
working on the railways and living in Quorn.

The railway finally closed down in 1972. The last scheduled
service was a goods passenger train and that was probably a wheat
train. In 1973 the Pitchi Ritchi Railway Society was formed. It was
originally formed to save the beautiful bridges and dry retaining
walls down the Pitchi Richi Pass.

Things to see:

Bruce Railway Station
In late 1986, when the railway station was pretty much in ruins,
Tony Gwynn Jones and his wife, purchased the Bruce Railway Station.
They revitalised the railway station in 1993 and opened for
business in March 1994. They sold out recently and it is now owned
and operated by new proprietors.